(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to providing access to virtual computing resources over a network.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Business travelers who travel without a laptop or who have lost use of their laptop for some reason do not typically have many options for securing computer time. One option is to avail oneself of free public access to computers at public libraries. Another is to pay for access at an office supplies store with a business center. Some hotels that specialize in business travel have dedicated business centers in which hotel guests can pay for access to desktop or laptop computers. All of these options have obvious shortcomings in terms of convenience, hours of use, peak usage availability, and customization of interfaces, e.g., personal settings.
Consider a typical business traveler arriving at a hotel for a short stay during a business trip. This person will typically require access to Internet services and other business applications during his/her stay. While these applications may well be available on the guest's own laptop computer, it may also be desirable to provide access to such services via the television in the guest's room. This would allow the guest to make use of such services without having to carry a laptop and without potentially violating usage policies for corporate IT equipment.
Unfortunately, traditional in-room entertainment facilities made available via the television (also referred to as interactive television services) do not typically provide access to a wide range of applications such as Internet browsing, business applications, or games, although recently, some of these applications have been made available in limited form. For example, an interactive TV system may provide a web browser. However, the range of web pages and the types of web content that may be accessed using such a web browser is extremely limited and certainly not representative of the most popular web sites available on the Internet today. For example, media-oriented web sites such as YouTube or News Channels do not operate correctly leaving the user unable to view online video content. In some cases the sites do not operate at all, or the video playback experience is of poor quality and often without an audio component. Additionally, the web browsing experience can often be very slow compared to the speed of browsing using a modern desktop computer. This can make use of online gaming web sites impossible or sluggish in response at best. In short, many of the most popular web sites in existence today cannot be visited by the interactive television web browsing services available today.
In addition, a wide variety of other types of applications commonly found on modern personal computers (e.g., business applications, games, social networking systems, messaging systems, etc.) are simply not offered by traditional interactive television services. This is due, at least in part, to the fact that interactive television services are often provided by a relatively low-powered set-top box in the guest room that cannot offer these types of applications because they are not able to operate within the set-top box environment (wrong operating system, not enough computing resources, etc.).